Bring Her Down
by LadySilvermist
Summary: She walks on the ceiling and he accepts it as normal. They have the same name, looking at each other is like looking into a genderbent mirror. They're best friends, she gets him and he gets her. He makes her laugh and her presence is nice for him. He wants to yank her down off the ceiling and make her stand on the floor. Not a romance. One-shot. I do not own Johnny C.


When someone loses something vital to who they are, one of two things happens: They find that missing thing to be rekindled in them by another person and live happily ever after with this "other half", or they go insane. But what of those who lose more than one piece completely, and go insane from this loss in a house that has shown itself to hold powers beyond belief? If they banish the entity using the houses magic might not they, all on their own and completely by accident, unknowingly create a vessel to restore their missing piece?

Nny didn't know when it had started. He came home one day and she was just THERE. A carbon copy of him almost, but female. And sitting on the ceiling. Literally, she was criss-cross applesauce on the ceiling, defying the laws of physics. He had no idea how long her hair was, because it was the only thing about her that didn't completely disregard gravity, but it looked like it would hang to her shoulders in a ragged mess. He sat on the floor for hours, watching her watch him. They just sat and stared.

He finally spoke, breaking the strange silence. "I'm Johnny."

She blinked, as if surprised he could speak. "Me too."

Nnys brow furrowed. "You're me?"

The girl shook her head. "My name is Jonnie. It's spelled J-O-N-N-I-E."

"Oh." He kept looking up at her while she looked down at him. "Mine's not spelled that way."

"You look like me." She stated.

"Actually, you look like me. Only a girl."

"Well what if I'm older?"

"You aren't."

"How do you know?"

"Because you look like me. So I'm obviously older."

"I'm 19."

"Oh. Huh. Meeee tooo...Well maybe we look like each other."

"Maybe." Jonnie stood up on the ceiling and reached her hand down. "Think we would be able to touch each other?" Nny made as if to stand, and she snatched her hand back. "You're wearing gloves right?"

"Yes," He said. Normally, he would have been offended by that (oh you don't want to touch me? why, what wrong with me, huh?!), but she was so obviously some form of him that it seemed only natural that she would be as disgusted by touching anothers flesh as he was. He stretched his hand up to meet hers, and noted another seemingly small difference: while all of his clothes were black or gray, even his gloves (_outside imitates inside,_ he thought snarkily), her gloves were a pure, pristine white.

Their fingertips brushed together, then their hands slid up until their palms were touching, both of them making sure there was no glass barrier between them. Although, they wouldn't mention that feeling that there would be glass between them, as it would surely seem odd. He wanted to yank her off the ceiling.

They retracted their hands and looked at each other again. They were close enough now to really see and appreciate the resemblance. It was like looking in a mirror. Nny shivered as he suddenly thought if he could just walk up onto the ceiling, she'd fall and they'd completely switch worlds…but he was reminded of all the attempts with the mirror, the inability to get to that other world, and he abandoned the thought. He was tempted to grab her again and snatch her off the ceiling though. Just for fun.

After that confirmation of reality, she followed him everywhere. He would stay on the floor, her up on the ceiling. They talked a lot. Their views were almost identical (of course) and where they differed she offered a reasonable (or an insane persons facsimile thereof) argument for her side, sometimes even winning him over to her viewpoint. They became fast friends, partly due to the fact that they could not kill each other from their respective places. She watched him work, and sometimes he would do something funny and she would cackle with mad laughter. Once, he took off a mans face, dipped it in melted plastic, and used the resulting mask to parody his last moments. She laughed so hard she passed out. That was the first time she came off the ceiling.

She hit the floor with a thump and he was unsettled. She didn't move and he became upset. She still didn't move and he became frightened. She groaned and he let out a sigh of relief. Her head came up off the floor, and she stood soon after. "Oh…" she said, glancing around. "So this is what it looks like from your perspective." She looked in his eyes. "Your eyes are much darker up close." She giggled as she started to float back up towards the ceiling, as if drawn by a magnet. Nny watched, and for some reason was upset by her floating away, like he was losing something that was very important to him.

She landed on the ceiling on her butt, and quickly stood back up. She stretched out and he had the urge once more to grab her and drag her down towhere he was. But he didn't. He was a bit afraid that if he did he would hurt her or something, probably by making her crash onto the floor again. He shook off the urge to pull her down where he was and continued about his day, with the added caution of not making her pass out.

As the days turned into weeks, he started noticing things. He'd pass out occasionally, and when he woke up from these forced 'naps', he'd find strange markings like paint drops on the ceiling. For a while, he ignored it, until he started noticing that sometimes he couldn't find Jonnie; she'd be gone for hours. At first, he just ignored that, too, along with his missing Christmas lights. But eventually, curiosity, that damned beast, overwhelmed him. He followed the paint drips.

They lead all the way down into an unused room in the 3rd basement. The door was closed tight, but through it, he could hear what sounded like someone humming, and the soft sounds of paint being carefully layered. He pressed close to the door, and could make out the humming as strains of a classical score, Beethovans 3rd, it sounded like. He carefully cracked the door, and emitted a soft gasp. The walls, the ceiling, dear Moose even the floor was covered in paint. Jonnie had created what looked like Van Goughs Starry Night, but stretched out and spread in a beautiful solar systemic whorl over the entire room. At various points throughout the room, she had dug tiny holes in the walls and ceiling, taken his white Christmas lights and wired them into the actual wiring of the house, making it look as though the stars in her painting were real and glowing. He looked up at where Jonnie was. She kneeled on a dry section of paint, putting the finishing touches on the ceiling. Her face was furrowed with concentration, humming quietly, Beethovans 3rd giving way to an old Irish folk song, The Maid Who Sold Her Barley. He didn't interrupt, he just watched her work. When she was done, she sat back and looked at her masterpiece fondly. When she finally noticed Nny, she smiled. "Hiya, Doppelgänger! What are you doing in my painting?"

"Wondering why you turned a whole room into a painting without asking me, aaaaaand admiring your artistic talent." It was more like envying her ability to paint than admiration of it, but he kept that to himself.

"Art waits for no ones permission!" She yelled joyously, before settling back down. "I maybe should have asked about the lights though."

"Well yeah, they were kind of important," Nny growled slightly.

"For aliens?" She guessed. He gazed up at her, slightly shocked that she had understood.

"Yeah."

"Sorry, I didn't know…"

"If I could reach you I'd kill you but since I can't I'm just going to let this one go."

"Hurray for high ceilings!"

He kept wanting to pull her down off the ceiling. He didn't know why but he felt like it was important, like it was something he had to do. But he held out.

They enjoyed a comfortable friendship. He wouldn't let her leave the house, for fear she'd float into the sky and never come back. She didn't mind, it meant she never had to interact with other people. She was a source of comfort and he was a source of laughter, but before too long another difference emerged. He was downstairs, and she was sealed inside her painting. He didn't know why, she had finished it weeks ago, but every day she went in there, shut the door and didn't come back out for hours. He assumed at first it was just a need for solitude, but one day he brought home a screamer and was proven totally wrong.

She liked screamers, so he knocked on her door to get her attention. Receiving no answer, he opened the door. She was laying curled up on the floor, her breathing shallow, her hair around her in a pool of glossy black. He panicked, taking her by the shoulders and shaking her roughly. Her eyes flew open at once.

"Huh? What?" She yelped as she floated slowly up off the floor, being drawn towards the ceiling. Once she got her bearings, she glared at him. "Nny, what the fuck did you do that for?"

"I..You…THE FLOOR!" He babbled, gesturing. "I thought you had fallen…"

She glared at him as she landed on her back on the ceiling. "I was sleeping! I float to the floor as I fall asleep. You woke me up."

"How was I supposed to know?! In case you haven't noticed, I don't sleep! I don't know how your damned sleep-magic works! Jumping Bullfrog Jesus!" They glared at each other for a few more minutes. Jonnie sighed.

"What was so important?" She asked tiredly.

"I brought home a screamer. I wanted to know if you wanted to watch me play with her." He said, still a little angry that she had yelled at him.

"Ooooooh!" She perked up immediately. "Yeah! Oh, I wanna help! Let me drop knives on her!"

As they went about their day, the argument was forgotten, but for reasons he couldn't fathom, Nny wanted more than ever to pull her off the ceiling.

One day he couldn't resist the temptation. She was lying on the ceiling on her back, and he was lying on the floor on his back. They were talking, like they often did. The feeling of wanting to pull her down off the ceiling rose in him, and he couldn't ignore it this time. He stood up and reached for her. She didn't question him, she just stood and did the same. He pulled, and she floated down, easy as could be. Her feet hit the floor with a soft thud and then they stood there. They just looked at each other. Nny let instinct guide him at this point. He put his arms wide and waited. She smiled and came closer. He closed his eyes and made a face as though he expected it to hurt, fighting the ingrained urge to fling her away from him. She wrapped her arms around him and then-

_They were fused becoming one she was melting through his skin and he was her and she was him and they were One and her gloves were black and his hair was to his shoulders and she was grinning with his lips while he laughed with her voice and then for a moment there was no gender he-she-they were a single being and they understood that she was his missing bits, good emotions and sleep and muse given form and they had touched and they had become. They were not Jonnie and they were not Johnny but they were something new, not what he was before but something better and new, and the merge was complete and he stood there alone and whole but he was not Johnny or Jonnie, he was Jonney .And Jonney could breathe, feel, think, murder, plan, love, be happy, dance, be normal or be evil and above all Jonney could PAINT. Jonney was whole and Jonney could paint._

And so, he did. Jonney painted until he fell asleep, and when he awoke, he was not scared and uncertain, he was rested and strong and brimming with new ideas for paintings.


End file.
